`PAW,' `P911' among popular buzzwords used by kids online

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Next time your kids are surfing the Internet with you in the room, you might want to pay attention to the words they're typing on the screen.

According to a segment on the Today show Friday morning, kids and teens use all sorts of top-secret slang in order to hide their online activity from nearby parents.

As educational psychologist Michele Borba told Today, most of the electronic buzzwords are acronyms that are typically used by kids to communicate with their friends online while parents are in the room.

The cyberspace slang includes terms such as "PAW" -- which stands for "parents are watching" -- and "POS," which means "parent over shoulder."

Some tech-savvy kids might use "P911" when mom or dad are lingering around, "PA" to refer to "parent alert" or the acronym "PIR," which simply stands for "parent in room."

If they feel a pair of watchful parental eyes directly over them, some kids may type "12345" onto their screen, which means their parent is reading whatever they are typing.

According to Borba, 95-percent of parents aren't familiar with this type of computer lingo used by their children.

She also said 64-percent of teens do things online they don't want their parents to know about, which gives parents all the more reason to learn these electronic buzzwords and monitor their kids' activity on the Internet.